The Walls of Lemuria

by Sam Sisavath

  Two of the creatures closest to the blast were ripped apart by buckshot. Flesh tore and blood splattered, but neither of the inhuman things went down. Keo didn’t know what he was feeling—maybe acceptance, or possibly fascination—as he watched the smelly, pruned-skin forms glower at him. One of them had lost half of its head; black globs of something that probably used to be blood but couldn’t possibly be anymore slurped out of its shattered skull. The other one had lost its left arm in the blast—not that it seemed to notice.

  “Oh, Jesus,” Jake whispered behind him.

  Keo racked the shotgun and fired again, then again and again.

  Fingers flew off, a chest exploded, and the sound of bones crunched under buckshot. A leg buckled and the body collapsed before the creature picked itself back up and stood on one bent leg.

  When he stopped shooting, they looked back out at him.

  Waiting…

  Keo was already reloading the Remington with fresh shells from the pouch when the radio clipped to his hip squawked and he heard Gillian’s voice, slightly frightened. “Keo, what’s happening out there? Are you okay? We heard shooting.”

  “Everything’s fine,” he said into the radio.

  “Are you still coming to get us?”

  He didn’t answer her right away, and instead shoved another shell into the shotgun.

  “Keo? Are you still out there? Please answer me…”

  “I don’t think I’m going to be able to make it back there, Gillian.”

  There was a long silence from her end. Then: “I was afraid you were going to say that. We can still hear them through the door. I can’t be sure how many, but it sounds like a lot.”

  You have no idea.

  “And they can’t get through?” he asked.

  “No. The door’s solid steel, like I said. They stopped trying to break it down last night. I guess they just gave up.”

  They do that. If they can’t get through, they give up. And then they wait, because eventually you’ll have to come out. And they have all the time in the world. What does time mean to something that doesn’t care if you smash their skull in or obliterate their brains?

  “Hey, you still out there?” Gillian said.

  “I’m still here.”

  “I thought you might have left us.”

  “Not yet.” Then, “What kind of supplies do you have in there?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Food. Water. How long can you last?”

  “We don’t have anything in here, Keo. We didn’t exactly plan this. When it happened, it was so fast. I was just looking for a place where they couldn’t get in. It’s my fault we’re in here.”

  It wasn’t quite self-pity he heard in her voice; it was more like resignation. She was giving up, likely because she had heard the same thing from him. That, more than anything, made Keo feel all of two feet and stuffed with a big bag of crap.

  “Gillian,” Keo said.

  “What?”

  “The town’s dead except for a handful of people that I’ve met so far.”

  “Oh, God. I was afraid of that.”

  “What I’m trying to say is, those people in there with you wouldn’t be alive now if you hadn’t taken them there.”

  She didn’t say anything.

  “Gillian?”

  “I’m here,” she said softly.

  “You did good.”

  “Thanks, Pa.”

  He smiled. She had a wicked sense of humor. He wondered what she looked like…

  “Now, sit tight some more and I’ll figure out a way to get to you,” Keo said. “I promise.”

  “Thanks, Keo. Whoever you are.”

  “I’ll talk to you soon.”

  “Don’t be a stranger.”

  He put the radio away and looked back at Jake. The young man’s eyes were focused on the hallway, on the creatures watching him back.

  “Jake,” Keo said.

  Jake didn’t respond. His attention remained glued to the hallway.

  “Jake,” Keo said, louder.

  The young man flinched a bit and finally looked over at him. “We can’t get to them. They’re all the way back there. We’d never make it all the way back there.”

  Keo nodded. “I know. Let’s go outside. See if there might be a back way into the morgue.”

  “And if there isn’t?”

  “I don’t know,” Keo said. “We’ll figure something out.”

  *

  Jake leaned against the hood of the Lancer, probably wondering why he had ever decided to come along in the first place. Keo didn’t blame him. Even though he knew it wasn’t going to be a quick rescue mission, he hadn’t really expected this.

  How the hell was he going to get Gillian and the others out of the morgue when he couldn’t even access the room in the first place? There were no windows anywhere that he could see, and Gillian herself said there was no other entry or exit out of the place except through the one steel door. The back door that the staff used to transport bodies to the morgue was closed, and when he leaned against it, he could hear the creatures moving restlessly on the other side.

  He walked around the building once, then a second time, just to be sure he hadn’t missed anything the first time. He hadn’t. He could walk around the hospital a third and a fourth time, and a door still wouldn’t magically appear for him.

  Gillian radioed him back during his second lap around the place. “Any second now, Keo.”

  “I’m still looking.”

  “Where are you now?”

  “Outside.”

  “Must be nice.”

  He imagined it had to be pretty bleak for her and the others at the moment. Morgues were, after all, where you stored dead bodies, and without electricity the freezing units wouldn’t do what they were designed to. In another day the smell would be unbearable, if it wasn’t already by now.

  Keo circled back around to the parking lot and glanced at his watch. Thirty minutes until noon.

  “Norris,” Keo said into the radio.

  It took a few seconds before he heard the ex-cop’s voice. “Yeah, kid.”

  “You been listening in?”

  “Couldn’t turn the channel. Real exciting stuff you guys have going on there. So what’s your next move?”

  “I don’t know yet. Are you packed and ready to hit the road?”

  “We’re all ready to go, but you still have until noon to get back here.”

  “Roger that.”

  “Are we going somewhere?” Gillian asked through the radio.

  “Fort Damper,” Keo said.

  “What’s there?”

  “A fort.”

  “Smart-ass.” Then, “Figured something out yet? It’s getting pretty hot in here.”

  “I’m still thinking.”

  He heard her sigh heavily. It was overly dramatic and for his benefit, no doubt.

  “Sit tight,” he said.

  “Sure,” she said. “I’ll call and cancel my day at the spa.”

  “That’s my girl.”

  “Keo, did I tell you?”

  “What’s that?”

  “I’m very attractive.”

  He smiled. “Is that right?”

  “Yes. I also have green eyes. It’s one of my best features and I’d love for you to get lost in them. So please, get me the hell out of here.”

  “I’ll do my best.”

  He stared at the building in front of him for a moment. Specifically, at the red-and-black brick and mortar that made up the wall. Behind that was the morgue, and Gillian. All he really needed was another entrance that wasn’t teeming with bloodsuckers on the other side. A new door of some kind.

  A door…

  “Gillian,” he said into the radio.

  “Really, really attractive,” she answered almost right away.

  He smiled again. “Where are you and the others right now inside the room?”

  “We’re kind of scattered everywhere. Why?”

&nb
sp; “I need you to move everyone away from the back wall. As far as you can. Get everyone to the front of the room.”

  She didn’t answer right away. Then, with more than just a touch of concern in her voice, “What are you going to do?”

  “I’m going to make a door.”

  “Oh God, I don’t like the sound of that.”

  “Trust me.”

  “I don’t even know you.”

  “Trust me anyway.”

  “I guess I don’t have much of a choice, do I?”

  “None that I can see. It’s a morgue, so it has those steel tables, right?”

  “Yes…”

  “You’ll want to use them as cover, just in case. Understand?”

  “Just in case of what?”

  “I thought you were going to trust me.”

  She sighed again. “Okay. And then what?”

  He walked back to the Lancer and Jake. “When you have everyone moved as far away from the back wall as possible, let me know.”

  “Okay,” she said. Then, “Keo…”

  “Yeah.”

  “Is this going to work?”

  “Definitely.”

  “You sound very sure of it.”

  “I am.”

  “Are you insane?”

  “I’ve been called worse.”

  Jake looked ready to leave when Keo reached him. “Are we going?”

  “Not yet,” Keo said.

  “How are we going to get them out?”

  “Do me a favor and start looking for a vehicle with keys in them.”

  Jake gave him a perplexed look.

  “Like the ambulance,” Keo said. “See if the keys are still inside.”

  “And if it’s not?”

  “You know how to hot-wire an ambulance?”

  “I…” He stopped and shook his head.

  “We’ll figure it out,” Keo said. “For now, you might want to get your stuff out of the Lancer.”

  *

  The Lancer was a full-size truck and weighed over 5,000 pounds. It had a maximum payload of over 1,500 pounds and was powered by a 5.7L V8. It also had a huge front grill and when Keo backed it up and slammed on the gas, it had no trouble whatsoever punching a hole into the side of the hospital.

  Keo hadn’t backed the truck all the way across the parking lot because he didn’t need that much of a head start. He wanted just enough speed to penetrate the wall, but too much and the collision would send huge blocks of brick flying across the room at Gillian and the others like missiles.

  The wall caved in as expected, chunks of it raining down and spiderwebbing the windshield of the Lancer from one side to the other and nearly collapsing the roof of the cab above him. He ducked his head, just in case. Keo knew he had lost the truck even before he saw smoke billowing out of the crumpled front hood. Trucks were not meant to be used as battering rams, but they sure made for a good one in a pinch.

  He couldn’t see much of anything through the smoke and debris outside the cracked windshield. He tried reversing the Lancer, but the rear wheels spun uselessly on him. After about ten seconds of futility, he turned off the engine and kicked the bent door open just enough to angle his way out.

  Jake was there to lend a hand, pulling him free from the destroyed vehicle. “Jesus. I can’t believe you just did that.”

  “Worked, didn’t it?”

  “Yeah, but… Jesus, you’re crazy.”

  Keo grinned at him.

  “He’s not wrong,” a familiar female voice said.

  Figures were climbing out of the rubble in front of the truck through the makeshift hole in the wall. One of them was a tall woman with black hair wearing jeans and a white T-shirt, coughing as she pushed a girl in a wheelchair outside. The girl had her shirt pulled over her mouth and nostrils to keep out the smoke.

  “You’re insane, Keo,” Gillian said with a big smile on her face. “I think I’m in lust.”

  CHAPTER 9

  Gillian had been hiding in the hospital morgue with ten others—three nurses and six people who had either been waiting to see a doctor or were visiting patients, and a young girl named Lotte, who was in a wheelchair. Lotte, whose broken right leg was covered in a cast from a car accident, was fourteen, and Jake was wheeling her up the ramp into the back of the ambulance.

  “How many are coming with us?” Keo asked Gillian.

  They watched the cars driving away, all of them in a hurry to get somewhere. There had been a lot of questions about what had happened last night, and Keo had told them everything he knew, which wasn’t much. He didn’t blame them for not coming to the police station with him and Jake, or going to Fort Damper. They had families, friends, and loved ones they needed to find, despite the odds being against them.

  By the time the last vehicle pulled out of the parking lot and disappeared up the street, it was just Keo and Gillian standing next to the ambulance, with Jake in the back getting Lotte’s wheelchair strapped in for the drive. Jake had found the keys to the ambulance still dangling from the ignition.

  “It’s just Lotte, me, and Taylor,” Gillian said. “Lotte’s family was killed in the accident that put her in the wheelchair about a month ago. Some cousins were supposed to come get her next week.”

  Taylor was one of the nurses, a pretty girl still wearing her blue nursing scrubs. She stood next to the ambulance, absently scraping at the dried blood on the front of her shirt and along her pant legs with her nails.

  “She told me she’s only been in town for about a year,” Gillian said, looking over at Taylor. “She had a boyfriend, but he left a few months ago for a job in Monroe, so she doesn’t have any friends or family, either.”

  “What about you?” Keo asked. “You’re taking the end of the world pretty well.”

  “Am I?”

  “Better than her,” Keo said, looking at Taylor.

  “I have an ex-husband running around out there somewhere. He can stay out there for all I care. Other than that, the only thing the end of the world means is I don’t have to pay the rent anymore.”

  “What were you doing at the hospital last night?”

  “I wasn’t feeling well all week, and the over-the-counter stuff I was taking was just making it worse.”

  She caressed her throat. Gillian was tall at five-eight and had a long neck to match. She was a strikingly beautiful woman, and as promised, she had lovely green eyes that he wouldn’t mind getting lost in at the first opportunity.

  “It was a last-minute thing,” she continued, “and the hospital was on the way home from work. It wasn’t like I had a social life, anyway.”

  “So, what did you have?”

  “I don’t know. All of this happened before I got the chance to see someone. Wouldn’t it be ironic if coming here saved my life, all because I thought I was coming down with something? That morgue might have been the best thing to happen to me last night.”

  “Where were you coming home from?”

  “What’s with all the questions?”

  He shrugged. “We’re not going anywhere until Jake’s done strapping Lotte in. I don’t like awkward silences.”

  “Bentley Savings and Trust,” she said. “I’m a bank teller. Well, I was a bank teller, I guess. Not much use for banks anymore, right?”

  “I guess not.”

  “So, what’s your story?”

  “I don’t have a story.”

  “Bull. What’s a guy like you doing in a two-horse town like Bentley?”

  “I was on vacation.”

  “In Bentley?”

  “Why do you sound so surprised?”

  “Did you not hear when I called this place a two-horse town?”

  “It has its charms.”

  She smirked. “Where were you on vacation from?”

  “Work.”

  “I got that part. What’s work?”

  “I did things for people who needed things done.”

  “That’s it?”

  “Yup, that’s it.” />
  Jake exited the back of the ambulance. “I got her strapped in, and we’re good to go.”

  Keo glanced at his watch. It was almost noon. “I talked to Norris, told him we were on our way. He said he’d wait for us for another half hour.”

  Jake nodded, the relief obvious on his face. The idea of having to chase after Norris and the others—including Tori and Henry—on the road had made him more than a little anxious.

  “Can you drive this thing?” Keo asked him.

  “Sure. It’s like driving a really big tractor.”

  “Really.”

  “I have no idea,” Jake said. “Can’t be that hard.”

  “I’ll sit in the back with Lotte and Taylor,” Gillian said.

  “Okay,” Keo said. “You can take inventory of what they have so we can clean it out when we reach the station. I was hoping to grab some medical supplies from the hospital, but I guess this’ll have to do.”

  He climbed into the front passenger seat of the ambulance. Jake was already settled in behind the steering wheel and adjusting his seat belt.

  “You sure you can drive this thing?” Keo asked.

  “Pretty sure,” Jake said.

  “Good enough.” He unclipped the radio and keyed it. “Norris.”

  “You took your sweet time,” Norris said through the radio.

  “We’re on our way back now.”

  “Tell me you’re not coming back empty-handed. I mean, besides the others.”

  “We’re coming in an ambulance. There might be things in the back we can use.”

  “Well, that’s something, I guess.”

  “Any troubles on your end?”

  “No. Just get your ass back here, kid. No more delays.”

  “Roger that.”

  Keo put the radio on the dashboard as Jake started up the ambulance and maneuvered them out of the parking lot. He seemed to be handling the large vehicle well enough, so Keo looked back through the opening between the two front seats. Gillian was sitting next to Lotte, whose wheelchair was strapped against the wall. The teenager was playing with a pebble turquoise bracelet around her left arm. Taylor sat further back, staring out the security glass of the twin doors at the hospital in the background.

  “Fort Damper, huh?” Gillian said.

  “In absence of any other viable options, it’s the best option at the moment,” Keo said.